There is usually at least one war movie that makes its way into the Oscars’ Best Picture nominee list each year. These films are often brilliant on a technical level, and yet they also carry a reputation of having stories that mainstream audiences find boring or confusing. Dunkirk’s release in July last year challenged this perception of the genre though, attracting widespread acclaim from both critics and casual viewers. Most notably, Christopher Nolan’s trademark use of non-linear narrative structure infuses the genre with new life and emotional investment – a tricky feat, given the desensitising nature of war.
Recounting the true story of how the Allied soldiers in World War II were evacuated from a beach on the coast of France, Dunkirk’s storyline interestingly enough complements the plot of another Oscar nominee this year – Darkest Hour. But where Darkest Hour explores the decisions being made in British parliament to save the stranded soldiers, Dunkirk opens a window into the desperate reality of the war itself.
Nolan takes Dunkirk a step away from what would be expected of a war movie by integrating three smaller subplots into the larger metanarrative of World War II. Each storyline takes place over different lengths of time, and yet they all end up in the same place by the end. This non-linear style could have benefitted from more clarification of the timelines, which are only vaguely suggested in onscreen text at the start. Though nevertheless, the order of events still eventually reveal themselves in due time as the plots start to overlap.
In our first storyline we spend a week following Tommy, one of many soldiers attempting to escape the German onslaught, who teams up with other young men to run, sneak, and lie their way to safety. Interwoven with Tommy’s perspective of the events is the journey of a small pleasure boat across the English Channel, on its way to rescue the stranded soldiers over the course of a day. Finally, the story of a Spitfire pilot taking down enemy fighter planes over Dunkirk is scattered in amongst the others, documenting the last hour of the pilot’s freedom before being captured by the Germans.
This deliberate choice to follow the evacuation of Dunkirk from three different perspectives illuminates so much more of the rescue operation than any individual story on its own. It paints a more rounded picture of this historical event than what we usually expect from war movies, particularly those that are also based on real conflicts. Despite feeling emotionally exhausted by the end of the film, seeing all the pieces fit together to form a cohesive historical account is immensely satisfying to watch.
Dunkirk also provides a wholly cinematic experience beyond its innovative storytelling techniques, pulling together its technical elements and integrating them masterfully. Action films tend to excel in the sound editing and mixing awards at the Oscars, but if Dunkirk was to keep with tradition and take out both of these categories then they would certainly be well deserved wins. Its intensely evocative sound design and cinematography capture every nightmarish detail of the war zone, conjuring phobias of fire, cramped spaces, heights, drowning, and so on. Nolan’s technical team moves past just the sheer horror of war too, every so often embedding tiny glimmers of hope, creating poignantly beautiful soundscapes and images of people coming together to save each others’ lives.
Watching a Christopher Nolan film often feels more like observing an impressive feat of engineering in action than it does seeing a movie. It isn’t just the cutting edge technology or huge budgets that make his films so consistently brilliant – it is his acute understanding of how to get the best results out of what he has to work with. Dunkirk works just as well as a piece of art as it does a technological accomplishment. It effectively maintains the key elements of Nolan movies that audiences continue to marvel at, while serving to show just how much he is willing to push beyond his comfort zone.
